Category: Fillums
Master and Commander (The Far Side of the World) is a good pitcher. I just got the DVD and watched it over two sessions; on both occasions leaving my children in after-school care so I could watch in peace. The Prof was not sure prior to its release down here, neither was Tony the Teacher.
It's not perfect.
- Some important pieces of cellulose ended up on the cutting room floor: why the hell did they abandon the chase of the Acheron into the West and return to the Galapgos?
- The violin and cello strumming simply did not work against the audio
- When Blakeney was left incharge of the ship he ordered the cannon to hit the hull (why didn't the cannonball roll out of the cannon as they pointed it down?) and the next moment they were boarding the froggy boat. Maybe my ignorance stepped in here.
- Some of the battle stuff leaves you wondering, until a surprise victory, who is winning. This is not uncommon in battle scenes generally but it could probably have been handled better. Of course it doesn't help that I was looking at a letter-boxed image at 2.35:1 which should have been clipped at the end into a true 16:9 so that we get a bit more information on the screen at the sacrifice of a few far edge bits of image... but that's another fight.
Russell Crowe magnificent, though I suspect it will look a bit BIG when we "look back in hindsight" twenty years from now. A bit like Katherine Hepburn's performance in The Lion in Winter looks just a touch overdone nowadays. Someone will tell me I'm wrong somewhere in this paragraph!
Other than that rough prediction, all acting was good, very, very good. That warrants a 9!
9/10 |
